


crumbling before your eyes

by crypticgemini



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Irondad, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Tony Stark, Whump, Written Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), heavy trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 00:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18487201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crypticgemini/pseuds/crypticgemini
Summary: Slowly he feels the rest of his body go completely numb, watches as he crumbles before his very eyes, and he locks eyes with Mr. Stark again…And somewhere in his mind, he supplies himself with the words he knows are supposed to come out of his mouth now. Knows that he has one more line to say, knows that this is the moment that he is supposed to give up the fight and let himself leave, but instead what comes out is different.-Peter hasn't fully recovered yet.





	crumbling before your eyes

 

Its been a year since the decimation has happened, and ten months since the revival of the people. What had felt like a mere couple of minutes to billions of people had actually been two full months. Obviously, it had taken some time for everyone to get settled down again after reuniting with their loved ones and their careers, but the victims were relatively unaffected by everything. Hell, the majority of them didn’t even remember what had happened to them.

 

Peter isn’t sure he remembers what happened to him. He knows where it happened and who he was with, but he doesn’t remember dying. 

 

When he was brought back, he came home with new quirks. Little things that he hadn’t noticed himself doing at first, like staring down at his hands, palms up, with a blank mind for minutes at a time without any discernable reason. 

 

He remembers everything during a chemistry class.

 

He’s sat at a desk in the middle of the classroom as per usual, listening to Mr. Cobwell explain their next unit. The buzz of the school swarms his head but he handles it swimmingly compared to his first couple of weeks after the spider bite. He can hear every little whisper in the room but he tries his best to focus on the lesson, his pencil twirling in his hand in the few breaks between taking notes.

 

In the back of the room, off to the side, is a small group of students who he knows had been sick on the day of one of their labs. Instead of giving the students zeros, Mr. Cobwell had been nice enough to give the group the materials they would need along with the instructions and told them to work silently in the back so as not to disturb the rest of the class. Although, the rest of the class now had to wear goggles as well since there were still chemicals being handled in the room.

 

As Peter starts writing something down, he hears a faint splash from the back of the room, along with a fizzle. One of the girls gasps and whispers, “Something’s happening!”

 

And Peter dr-

 

_ -ops to his knees momentarily, gasping for breath as he fights the exhaustion weighing down on him. _

 

_ “Something’s happening…” he hears the woman with the strange antennae say as she clutches onto Quill, confusion evident in her voice when she looks around at them. _

 

_ He watches in horror as her arm disintegrates. Then her legs, then her torso, and finally her head, until the space she had occupied was completely void of her presence, as though she had never been there at all. He can barely register his own shock before the large olive coloured man is falling apart too. Frozen, he watches the people around him disappear one by one until it’s just him, Mr. Stark, and the blue lady who looks more machine than alien. _

 

_ And then he feels it. He doesn’t know what it feels like, only that he feels it, and his stomach plummets, leaving him feeling ice cold and boiling at the same time. _

 

_ “I don’t feel so good…” He croaks, staring into Mr. Stark’s eyes. “I don’t - I don’t know what's happening…” He picks himself up and stumbles towards the man before latching onto him with a grip so tight that any other time he would be worried he’d broken bone. Peter shakes his head violently as he holds onto the man in front of him. _

 

_ “I don’t - I don’t wanna go.” Tears threaten to fall from his eyes and against his better judgement he lets them, feeling them pour down his already dirty face. “I don’t wanna go, sir, please. Please, I don’t want to go.” He begs. His throat feels scratchy and raw despite him only having spoken a few sentences. He watches as his fingers start to turn to dust and blow away with the wind, feels the exact moment that he loses feeling in his hands, then his knees. _

 

_ Mr. Stark holds him tighter and Peter can’t see his face, can’t picture what it must look like until he’s falling onto his back with Mr. Stark on top of him. “You’re going to be okay, kid, listen, you’re going to be okay,” The man speaks so fast that Peter can hardly hear him and he can already tell that Mr. Stark doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. _

 

_ “I don’t wanna go,” Peter sobs, trying to raise his arms to grip onto Mr. Stark again only to find that he can’t move what he doesn’t have.  _

 

_ “You’re not going anywhere, kid,” Mr. Stark is loud but his voice wobbles and it sounds pitiful, even to Peter.  _

 

_ Slowly he feels the rest of his body go completely numb, watches as he crumbles before his very eyes, and he locks eyes with Mr. Stark again… _

 

_ And somewhere in his mind, he supplies himself with the words he knows are supposed to come out of his mouth now. Knows that he has one more line to say, knows that this is the moment that he is supposed to give up the fight and let himself leave, but instead what comes out is, _

 

_ “I don’t wanna go! Please! Please, please, please, please, sir, I don’t wanna go!” He cries. He cries because he’s scared. He’s terrified. He doesn’t know what’s happening yet he knows exactly what’s happening and he hates it. “Please, I don’t wanna go, sir, please, I don’t wanna go!” He screams, barely able to breathe with how quickly he is speaking and he starts choking. Pushing himself up as hard as he can he tries to crash into Mr. Stark, but all he does is stumble back to the rocky ground. “Please,” he whispers. _

 

_ He feels himself being shaken, hears Mr. Stark talking to him, but he can’t make out the words. Everything is fuzzy and he knows that he’s dying. Still, he feels himself convulse, and he’s shaking he’s shaking oh god he’s dying he’s shaking- _

 

“It’s okay, I’m still here, you’re not going anywhere, Peter.” He hears a soft voice repeat over and over to him as he slowly comes back to himself. His eyes are clamped shut and he doesn’t want to open him. He feels way too light, as though he’s about to pass out, but he wakes himself up further before that can happen.  

 

His bones ache, presumably from sitting in a weird position for too long, and when he notices this he lets himself slump over into a strong pair of arms that were apparently waiting for him. Instinctively, he grips onto the figure holding him and pulls himself closer. His breaths don’t feel deep enough to properly provide him with the air he so desperately needs so he starts breathing faster, only to stop when one of the hands around him gently pats his back.

 

“Hey, hey, you don’t have to do that, come on,” the voice says, deeper this time. “Come back to me here, deep breaths, okay? Long, deep breaths. That’s it.” They say as Peter follows the instructions. When his head is clearer, he’s able to identify the voice as Mr. Stark’s, but he still isn’t coherent enough to be embarrassed that the man is holding him. “There we go, deep breaths.”

 

“Mr. Stark,” he wheezes, though he isn’t entirely sure why he spoke in the first place. He registers the tears flowing down his cheeks as he buries his face into the man’s probably very expensive shirt and cries.

 

“I’m here, kid,” Mr. Stark says, calm yet firm. “I’ve got you.”

 

The sound of his voice and just how steady it was was what helped ground Peter the most right then. He wasn’t in space on some alien planet. He wasn’t crumbling to dust. He focused on sensations, focused on the hand in his hair, focused on the sweat on his forehead, focused on the cool tiles on the floor.

 

“Gr-ground. Help ground me, please,” Peter whispers so quietly that he’s not entirely sure Mr. Stark heard him, but he must have because the man starts to speak.

 

“Your name is Peter Parker,” he starts, speaking as clearly as he can, “You are inside of Midtown High. It is currently 11:43 AM on a Tuesday. You’re on Earth. You’re alive, okay? You’re living and breathing and you’re alive, Peter. You’re okay.” He ends with such finality that Peter immediately believes every word and he sighs.

 

“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I’m alive.” Deep breath in, deep breath out.

 

All too quickly his senses kick back in, bombarding him with the sounds and smells of the high school around him. Normally he can manage, but right now everything is too overwhelming.

 

“I need to leave.” He says. He knows he has to let go of Mr. Stark, even though the thought of it terrifies him, leaves him with the worry that if he lets go then he might slip away. That doesn’t happen, though, as Peter slowly and carefully detaches himself from the older man and tries his best to stand up. The hallways are empty and most noises are coming from inside of the classrooms surrounding him. He feels trapped. “Mr. Stark, I need to leave.” 

 

Mr. Stark gently places an arm around his shoulders and starts to guide Peter out. “Yeah, let’s go, c’mon. I’ll take you home, okay? I’ll call up your aunt, let her know you’re not feeling so hot and that I’ve got you out of school.”

 

Peter just hums and allows himself to be guided.

 

He doesn’t really think about anything as he’s driven back home. He just stares thoughtlessly out the window at the passing stores until they’ve parked and Peter’s being led out of the car and into his apartment building.

 

As soon as he walks through the door he drops his backpack onto the floor with a loud thump that almost makes him flinch and he goes into the kitchen. With shaking hands, he pulls a mug down from one of the cupboards and goes on a mission to find a packet of hot chocolate mix. It takes him mere seconds and he’s putting a pot of milk on the stove. Mr. Stark watches him from the kitchen entrance in what looks like a relaxed pose, but Peter is a master at faking body language and can easily tell that the man is tense. He sighs tiredly and turns to face him.

 

“I’m sorry,” he starts off, pausing in order to figure out what it is that he wants to say. “I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know how you knew to come and get me, but I’m sorry you had to deal with… whatever the hell that was.” His voice sounds scratchy and weak from crying.

 

Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow at him and tapped at his own wrist. “Your friend - Ned, I think - noticed you were saying my name during your episode and managed to figure out the panic button on your watch. Said you were fine one second and then you just collapsed in your seat and ran out of the classroom. He had to follow you to see what was wrong and decided that it was bad enough to call me.” He explains. “I’m glad he did, honestly. You were pretty gone by the time I arrived. I’m not sure anyone at the school would have been able to pull you out of that flashback without doing more harm than good.”

 

“Flashback?” Peter asks, more to himself than to Mr. Stark, but is distracted by the milk finally simmering on the stove and he rushes to turn off the burner and transfer it to his mug. He mixes his hot chocolate over the sink so as not to spill anything on the counter. “I don’t know what happened.”

 

Mr. Stark smiles at him then. A sad look made more with the eyes than the smile itself and it makes Peter feel guilty without knowing why. “Pretty sure that was a flashback, buddy. I’ve seen so many of them that I usually know one when I see one.”

 

Peter sips at his warm drink and slides down the counter against his back until he’s sitting on the kitchen floor, his mug in his lap. “I don’t want to have one of those ever again.” He says finally, after seconds too long of silence. Mr. Stark crouches down next to him and joins him on the floor.

 

“No one ever wants to have them, but you don’t exactly get to choose PTSD either.”

 

He shakes his head and wraps his hands around the mug just to feel the heat coming off of it. He wants to protest, wants to shout out into the apartment that he doesn’t have anything wrong with him. He’s still a kid, as much as he likes to say he isn’t. He’s never joined the army, never fought in a real war, knows that his experiences haven’t exactly been the prettiest but he’s never had to  _ kill.  _ But he swallows that. Instead, he thinks about the things that he knows he’s still hung up on. He still flinches at any noise too closely resembling the mechanical whirring of metal wings, still refuses to use an elevator because it’s too small of a space and he doesn’t want to become trapped within it. He thinks about how he spaces out for minutes at a time just staring at his hands as if trying to prove to himself that they’re still there. Now he can connect a reason to that, now he knows it’s because he’s trying to prove to himself that they will  _ stay _ there, that they won’t start to crumble in front of him.

 

He holds his hands up to his face, palms up, and looks down at them as he moves each individual finger before putting his hands back down onto his mug. He turns to face Mr. Stark once again. “I’m - I’m scared, sir.”

 

Mr. Stark lets out a soft breathy laugh and leans his head back until it hits the counter behind him. “I know, kid. We’ll get through this, though. We will.”

 

He nods, gulps down the last of his hot chocolate, and leaves the now empty mug sitting between his legs. With his shirt sleeve pulled over his hand, he wipes at his tired eyes, and murmurs a faint, “Alright.”

  
  



End file.
